The corpus of literary works shaped by the Renaissance and the Baroque that appeared in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had a transforming effect on writing throughout Europe and left a rich legacy that scholars continue to explore. For four decades after the Spanish Civil War the study of this literature flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, where many of the leading scholars in the field were based. Though this particular 'Golden Age' was followed by a decline for many years, there have recently been signs of a significant revival. The present book seeks to showcase the latest research of established and younger colleagues from Great Britain and Ireland on the Spanish Golden Age. It falls into four sections, in each of which works by particular authors are examined in detail: prose (Miguel de Cervantes, Francisco de Quevedo, Baltasar Gracian), poetry (The Count of Salinas, Luis de Gongora, Pedro Soto de Rojas), drama (Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de Vega), and colonial writing (Bernardo Balbuena, Hernando Dominguez Camargo, Alonso de Ercilla). There are essays also on more general themes (the motif of poetry as manna; rehearsals on the Golden Age stage; proposals put to viceroys on governing Spanish Naples). The essays, taken together, offer a representative sample of current scholarship in England, Scotland, and Ireland.

Taking up the invitation extended by tentative attempts over the past three decades to construct a functioning definition of the genre, Jonathan Bradbury traces the development of the vernacular miscellany in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain and Spanish-America. In the first full-length study of this commercially successful and intellectually significant genre, Bradbury underlines the service performed by the miscellanists as disseminators of knowledge and information to a popular readership. His comprehensive analysis of the miscelánea corrects long-standing misconceptions, starting from its poorly-understood terminology, and erects divisions between it and other related genres. His work illuminates the relationship between the Golden Age Spanish miscellany and those of the classical world and humanist milieu, and illustrates how the vernacular tradition moved away from these forebears. Bradbury examines in particular the later inclusion of explicitly fictional components, such as poetic compositions and short prose fiction, alongside the vulgarisation of erudite or inaccessible prose material, which was the primary function of the earlier Spanish miscellanies. He tackles the flexibility of the miscelánea as a genre by assessing the conceptual, thematic and formal aspects of such works, and exploring the interaction of these features. As a result, a genre model emerges, through which Golden Age works with fragmentary and non-continuous contents can better be interpreted and classified.

This book presents the first sustained analysis of the reception of the Aristotelian golden mean and related ideas of moderation in the literature and thought of early modern Spain (1500-1700). It explores the Golden-Age understanding of Aristotle's doctrine as a prolegomenon to literary study, and its allegorical reformulation in the myths of Icarus and Phaethon, before arguing that scrutiny of how the mean and the related concept of ethical moderation are treated by early modern authors represents a vital but underexploited tool for literary analysis. Particular attention is paid to detailed case studies of works by three canonical authors—Garcilaso, Calderón, Gracián—demonstrating the value of the mean as a locus of critical attention, as analysis of its presentation allows several long-standing disputes in the scholarship on these authors to be newly resolved.

This book provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art account of the field, reaffirming Iberian Studies as a dynamic and evolving discipline offering promising areas of future research. It is an essential tool for research in Iberian Studies.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, New York caught the attention of Spanish writers. Many of them visited the city and returned to tell their experience in the form of a literary text. That is the case of Pruebas de Nueva York (1927) by Jose Moreno Villa (1887-1955), El crisol de las razas (1929) by Teresa de Escoriaza (1891-1968), Anticipolis (1931) by Luis de Oteyza (1883-1961) and La ciudad automatica (1932) by Julio Camba (1882-1962). In tune with similar representations in other European works, the image of New York given in these texts reflects the tensions and anxieties generated by the modernisation embodied by the United States. These authors project onto New York their concerns and expectations about issues of class, gender and ethnicity that were debated at the time, in the context of the crisis of Spanish national identity triggered by the end of the empire in 1898.

A careful re-evaluation of pastoral poetics in the early modern Hispanic literature of Spain and Latin America. In her analysis of the verse of representative poets of the Hispanic Baroque, Holloway demonstrates how these writers occupy an Arcadia which is de-familiarised and yet remains connected to the classical origins of the mode. Herstudy includes recent manuscript discoveries from the Spanish Baroque (Fábula de Alfeo y Aretusa, now attributed to the Gongorist poet Pedro Soto de Rojas), the poetry of Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza and Francisco de Quevedo. The study considers pastoral as a global cultural phenomenon of the Early Modern period, its reverberations reaching as far as Viceregal Peru. The tradition of the pastoral as a site for the discussion of 'great matters in theforest' has deep roots, and re-emerges to praise the urban hearts of empire. Furthermore, it proves to be a site of spiritual encounter--a poetic space that frames the staging of indigenous conversion in the poetry of Diego Mexiaand Fernando de Valverde. Within the intricacies of this literary construct, surface artistry sustains an effect of artless innocence that is vibrantly contested across the secular, sacred, parodic and colonial text. Anne Holloway is a Lecturer in Spanish, Queen's University Belfast.

How did Spanish-American writers and veterans in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century use epic poetry to search for ethical solutions to the violent conflicts of their age?Winner of the 2017-18 AHGBI-Spanish Embassy Publication Prize The Epic Mirror studies how Spanish-American writers and veterans in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century used epic poetry to search for ethical solutions to the violent conflicts of their age. The wars about which they wrote took place at the frontiers of the Spanish empire, where new political communities were emerging: fiercely independent Amerindian republics, rebellious Spanish settlers, maroon kingdoms of fugitive African slaves. This colonial reality generated a distinctive vision of just warfare and political community. Working across the fields of Hispanic literature, the history of political thought, and studies of empire, colonialism and globalisation, Choi reinterprets three major works of colonial Latin American literature: Alonso de Ercilla's La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?'s La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?'s La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?'s La Araucana (1569-90), Pedro de Oña's Arauco domado (1596), and Juan de Miramontes Zuázola's Armas antárticas (1608-9). She argues that these works provide a rare insight into the development of political thought in Viceregal Peru. Through the imaginative mirrors of epic, the reader is forced to ask the same questions of the unfinished conquests of the Americas as of those in Africa, Asia or Europe: when conflicting forces are divided by irreconcilable world views, even if the war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?war is won, how is it possible to achieve peace?